Photo Rehab Cover Makeover #10: The Lord of the Rings

The effort for Cover Makeover #10 turned out as the most time-consuming to date. Not because the cover I made is complicated (read “busy”) but because I had a number of false starts as I tried to realize my vision. 

The challenge this week is to do a makeover of The Lord of the Rings. Here is the cover from the post linked above.

Fair warning, the end product is not exactly what I had envisioned. For instance, I wanted to include my running Ent:

I also wanted to use some geographical features from Kauai . . . 

Alas, I had too much stuff to blend it all to my liking. The Ent and Kauai had to go. 

So, here’s the process . . . first, I had to take a photo of a ring. Melisa is still able to easily get her ring off (I can get mine off only after a lot of effort and a moderate amount of swearing) so I used her ring and one of her gold chains laying on black glass for my seed photo of the ring.

I then downloaded a number of elvish looking fonts and added some writing . . . . 

The outer writing says (maybe) “life sucks but at least it is short”. I say maybe because that is what the letters spell out, but I don’t know elvish so that particular arrangement of letters is not likely to translate into something Sauron or Elron or any other rons might recognize. The inner writing spells out something regarding Disperser (that’s me) ruling above all . . . an obvious lie. 

At this point, I was pretty happy . . . then I realize that glass creates a mirrored image. Back to the drawing board and  . . .

Because it was not done at the same time and because the original path was erased, that is a very poor mirror image of the lettering. It would have to do; I am not about to redo all of that.

Next I needed Mount Doom. Odd that, but I could not find any Mount Dooms in Colorado. OK, OK . . . I did not look real hard; I just grabbed this photo of Pikes Peak. 

While I was at it, I grabbed these photos as well . . . 

I don’t explicitly say it every time but it should always be assumed I either use my own photos or create components from scratch. None of this stuff, including representations of logos or other items, are copied. I do use existing fonts, but only those that are free for personal use. 

So, let’s start with Pikes Peak and change it to Mount Doom . . . 

Not quite there yet . . . let’s take the snow and convert it to lava.

Pretty good, but still not “doomy” enough . . . 

Better. Now, cut out the tower, clean it up, crop the mountain, and merge the two to get this.

Passable.

Next, I need a lone rider, so I modify the riders to this . . . 

. . . and then this . . . 

Now, blend all them things in there, play with the tower to add a wizard-like figure complete with shining staff, and you get this:

Next, download the fonts used in the movie (free for non-commercial use), and you get this:

Even without all the neat stuff I had originally planned, I think this captures the spirit of the book. I could have added other touches, but it’s good enough to stand as is.

I hope this exercise in a bit of escapism has entertained you. If not, don’t tell anyone about this post. Unless there is someone you don’t like, in which case point them here so they too can suffer. 

That’s it. This post has ended . . . except for the stuff below.

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. . .  my FP ward  . . . chieken shit.